BERNE — After more than a year of speaking out against the removal of Cheryl Baitsholts as Berne’s dog-control officer and lambasting the GOP-backed town board for dragging its feet on reappointing her — or anyone — after her replacement resigned, Berne Democratic Councilman Joel Willsey voted against Baitsholts’s reappointment at the town’s August board meeting, arguing that the pay reduction proposed by the GOP-backed town board is inappropriate.

In the past, Berne dog-control officers have received a fixed salary. The Berne 2021 budget allocates $4,000 to the dog-control officer. However, last month the board discussed changing the pay structure from a salary to a wage of $19 per hour, with the amount of hours worked dependent on the number of calls received and the complexity of the jobs.

The motion to hire Baitsholts at a rate of $19 per hour between 7 a.m. and 7:59 p.m. and $24 per hour between 8:00 p.m. and 6:59 a.m. was made by Republican Deputy Supervisor Dennis Palow, who was running the meeting in the absence of Supervisor Sean Lyons, and it was seconded by Bonnie Conklin, a Conservative backed by the GOP. Both voted in favor of the motion. 

“I see no reason not to reinstate her under the terms she was working under when she was illegally removed from office, so I say no,” Willsey said as he cast his nay vote, referring to a statement made to The Enterprise by Deputy Personnel Director for the Albany County Department of Civil Service David Walker in 2020, indicating that Baitsholts was under Civil Service protection when she was suddenly removed from office. 

“Dog control officers are in the competitive class and therefore covered under Civil Service Law Section 75,” Walker said at the time.

Republican Councilman Leo Vane was also absent from the August meeting. 

Although the motion failed because the board was unable to reach a majority approval, Palow was apparently under the impression that the motion passed, 2-to-1. Full-board majorities must still be achieved in the absence of any members, so all three board members present at the August meeting were needed to pass the resolution.

Palow said after the vote that he would call Baitsholts at a later date to see if she’s still interested. 

“I have no problem with Joel Willsey voting the way he did,” Baitsholts told The Enterprise this week. “He was going to bat for me on salary and the board removing the mileage for using my own vehicle. I believe that’s illegal.”

She said that Town Clerk Anita Clayton and Deputy Town Clerk Mathew Harris reached out to her to inform her of the vote, and that Clayton said Baitsholts had until Thursday to confirm that she was still interested. 

Baitsholts said she has not made a decision yet about whether she’d accept the position as proposed at the Aug. 11 meeting.

The town has been without a dog-control officer since April, when controversial appointee Jodi Jansen resigned. Jansen was appointed in January of 2020, replacing Baitsholts, who by that point had been in the position for almost 19 years.

With town residents already upset that a beloved and competent official was removed from her position without reason, Jansen, who had no known animal-control experience, furthered his unpopularity when, shortly into his tenure, he threatened to call the police on a woman who had sheltered a wounded dog that wandered onto her property.

Residents have since complained that Jansen was difficult or impossible to reach. An Enterprise Freedom of Information Law request for his mileage reimbursements — an attempt to quantify the amount of work he was doing for the town in the absence of other, more direct records — could not be fulfilled earlier this year by Town Clerk Anita Clayton, who said she’d “made due diligence to collect them but I do not have them at this time.” 

Jansen resigned suddenly in April, because, as Lyons told The Enterprise at the time, his primary occupation was bringing him out of town too often to be able to perform his dog-control duties. 

That resignation was supposedly given just before a moribund dog was found with bullet wounds along a Berne road, creating confusion at the Albany County Sheriff’s Office about who was handling the town’s dog control. Ultimately, the office relied on assistance from Baitsholts, who has told The Enterprise that, despite being replaced by Jansen, she still receives calls from people with dog concerns. 

For a time, Baitsholts was the only candidate for dog-control officer following Jansen’s resignation, but soon she was in competition with a man named Dexter Baker, who is a dog-control officer in Broome (Schoharie County). 

The GOP-backed town board seemed to prefer Baker, though Willsey alleged last month that Palow lied about interviewing Baker, who did not return Enterprise calls for confirmation. Palow insisted at the time that he did speak with Baker but did not respond to an Enterprise request for proof of the conversation. 

Baker ultimately withdrew his candidacy in a letter sent to the Berne Town Board this month, citing the “political turmoil” within the town. 

Clayton confirmed for The Enterprise this week that Baitsholts remains the sole candidate for the position following Baker’s withdrawal. 

Municipalities that administer dog licenses are required by York State law to have a dog- or animal-control officer, and Berne will be in violation of that law until an officer is appointed. 

Last month, Director of Public Information for the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets Jola Szubielski told The Enterprise that the department would “reach out to the town to remind the town it is out of compliance with the position vacant, and encourage them to appoint a DCO as soon as possible.”